dtrapd is SNMP Notification Receiver and it is a part of Notification Processor-a. It is a daemon process which works all the time the system is running and it expects SNMP Traps which come through the network from remote SNMP agents. According to its configuration dtrapd runs for each SNMP Trap specified programs depending on a content of a message. Data included in a received message are passed on to running programs as their input parameters.

dtrapd reads its configuration files: .dtrapdrc and .dtrapd-maybedropped-rc during its startup. The program expects to find the configuration files in the directory /etc/david-system. dtrapd daemon won't be run if it can't read its configuration files. A way of the configuration can be modified through input parameters (options) of dtrapd during its startup.